Kids Martin Luther King Academic Middle School in the Bayview walk through the court yard between clases .
Kids at Martin Luther King Academic Middle School in the Bayview have a dress code and wear uniforms every day.
THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007 KURT ROGERS/THE CHRONICLE SAN FRANCISCO THE CHRONICLE
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Public schools don't violate students' freedom of expression by requiring them to wear uniforms, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Monday.

In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Nevada school district's clothing rules against challenges from students, including a high school junior who was suspended five times for a total of 25 days for wearing a T-shirt with religious slogans.

The Clark County School District's policies were not intended to squelch free speech, but instead were aimed at "creating an educational environment free from the distractions, dangers and disagreements that result when student clothing choices are left unrestricted," Judge Michael Hawkins said in the majority opinion.

Dissenting Judge Sidney Thomas said the ruling was at odds with the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1969 decision that upheld a student's right to wear a black armband in protest of the Vietnam War as long as it did not disrupt the classroom. Under Monday's ruling, Thomas said, a school could prohibit such protests, or any other attire that expressed an opinion, by requiring students to wear uniforms.

The students' lawyer, Allen Lichtenstein of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said he will ask the full appeals court to set the ruling aside and order a rehearing before a larger panel. He said the ruling could be extended beyond schools and might allow a city to ban political expression in some public areas.

As a constitutional interpretation, the ruling is binding on federal courts in nine states, including California. But parents in California still have the right under state law to exempt their children from a school's requirement to wear uniforms.

No such opt-out right exists in Nevada, where state law requires schools merely to consult with parents before requiring uniforms. The Clark County district, which includes Las Vegas, requires its schools to get approval from 55 percent of the parents to impose a uniform requirement on all students.

Lead plaintiff Kimberly Jacobs attended Liberty High School, which required students to wear khaki-colored bottoms and solid-color tops, with no writings except the school logo. After Jacobs was repeatedly suspended for wearing a shirt that expressed her Mormon beliefs, a federal judge ruled in her favor in 2005 and ordered the school to stop enforcing its policy against her and erase records of the suspensions.

But the appeals court said the policy is valid because it promotes legitimate educational goals - such as safety and the removal of distractions from learning - and applies equally to all written expression on clothing, regardless of content.

In contrast to the black armbands in the 1969 Supreme Court case, which were prohibited because of the opinion they expressed, the Las Vegas high school banned all apparel-related expression except the school logo, which conveys no particular message, Hawkins said. He said students remain free to express their opinions in conversations, school newspaper articles or in after-school attire.

Read the ruling

The appeals court ruling in Jacobs vs. Clark County School District is available at: links.sfgate.com/ZCAB